GMH Hunters - What's Up With That?

[Patuk]

Idk. If every staffer did one craft ever day - scribble down the required things, place it on the proper clan's list, rejoice, you'd be done within the year. Maybe these fancy new builders could help out somehow.

[Desertman]

Idk. If every staffer did one craft ever day - scribble down the required things, place it on the proper clan's list, rejoice, you'd be done within the year. Maybe these fancy new builders could help out somehow.

Please note I didn't want the crafters to be given a list of every single craftable item in the game. I meant only House specific crafts they would have knowledge of due to the fact VNPC's would be around them to share that information regularly in the crafting halls/would be making it in front of them regularly.

Then again, that list might be pretty darn big too.

(I absolutely agree that giving House crafters a list of every item, 4,000+ holy shit, is ridiculous.)

I would imagine such a list would be available within the clan forums of each specific House.

It might be a lot of work on the front end, but if they are House specific crafts only, then it doesn't matter if "The knowledge is out.", even if you come back with a new character later you can't use it because it is Salarri coded for crafting only.

I can know every single Salarri recipe in the game, but if I'm not a Salarri, I can't make those items. If I am a Salarri, then more power to me I am giving a lot of people a lot to do if I am making that stuff.

It's the exact same idea as putting the items on a NPC vendor in terms of giving out the crafting recipes. There is absolutely no difference there. The only change? Now they have...."Buy Item NPC", "Analyze Item", "Resell Item to NPC".

The exact same recipes will go to the exact same people, just through a different format.

The only thing that changes? The economy behind making hunters and crafters on the grass-roots level of the Houses feel valuable in any way in terms of them being a necessity for production.

Amount of work for staff? Same. They still have to load ZERO items EVER. (Perhaps even less. I don't know how hard it is to make an NPC and put items on them when compared to typing up a wall of text in a forum and giving that sub-forum special permissions.)

Edited to Add:

I do see one bit of extra staff work involved with my idea. People would have to submit requests for access to the sub-forum once they reach the right rank with their crafters. Based on the number of high-ranking crafters Houses have right now on the PC level, I don't see this being a huge amount of work. One every now and then.

Then again, if you implement my idea, I foresee A LOT more people being interested in being House crafters (not to mention hunters), but still, I don't think it would be a lot of work to grant those permissions as people rise through the IC ranks.

Edited again to Add:

I fully understand staff has already decided what they are going to do. I just enjoy discussing potential ideas for the future. Who knows what they will change their minds about a year after this goes in and they see how it works for them/the Houses. These ideas will be here when that time comes.

[Nyr]

[Nyr]

Do you have other ideas on making GMH stuff better without foisting unrealistically high amounts of unfun work on staff and potential builders?

[Desertman]

Do you have other ideas on making GMH stuff better without foisting unrealistically high amounts of unfun work on staff and potential builders?

Let me do the work since I would find it to be fun/fulfilling personally.

With that being said, I have no idea how much work that would be because I'm not a staffer. I'm just giving out ideas. If you don't like the fact I am presenting ideas, I can stop.

It's not like I'm holding a gun to your head making you work like a sweat shop slave. I'm just presenting thoughts in a forum.

And yes, yes I do, but this thread if for discussing the economy surrounding making House hunters feel more useful and was triggered off of the conversation surrounding the new NPC change, so I am focusing on that now in this thread.

I can create another thread if you would like for more GHM ideas not related to this specific topic.

[grumblezor]

I love the Field Operative idea for so many reasons, primarily because it encourages the type of thinking I'd like to see in the GMH.

Let's make this a thing.

[Desertman]

I love the Field Operative idea for so many reasons, primarily because it encourages the type of thinking I'd like to see in the GMH.

Let's make this a thing.

+1, I like this one too. It won't change the dynamics of the role in any way really, but, it will change the mindset around the role.

Houses often already do use "Hunters" with special talents to do things other than hunt (though those situations are rare, as are those hunters).

I like it.

Then again, if we delve too far in that direction I imagine we might slip into the realm of other roles already filled within Houses. Things like "shadowy Agents" and what not probably already exist and might already have their own hidden ranks within the House structures.

[Jeax]

While I am also concerned about what this will mean for GMH hunters, I think it will greatly enhance the life of a GMH Merchant, and more than that, I am actually really excited to see "forgotten" recipes sneak back into the game. Maybe everyone won't be wearing the same five cloaks. I saw recently the new variety to mounts and thought that was neat. More variety to gear would be even better. So, that's what I would most look forward to from this change.

I think as long as the NPC doesn't have infinite insta-load or something (because I think this would be abused in ways like "For a little extra coin, we can rush this order for you. *take cut, bypass hunters*", etc) I think it will be fine. But ultimately, hopefully if it just really slams GMH lifestyle it will be adjusted. I 1) think Staff probably have adequate information to make at least a decent decision and 2) don't believe they are out to destroy the role of GMH hunter. As long as I have even these small faiths, I can be alright with something coming out that I am apprehensive about.

As far as to the current topic...GMH hunters are more well taken care of than indie hunters...up to a point. A really "powerful" and well known indie hunter can actually probably provide for themselves a lot more coinage, travel, etc, than a GMH can, but you also lose a level of purpose and RP interactions/plots. There's just more to be done in a GMH, than outside of one. You can lead others, do training, get involved in politics, etc etc. I find a GMH really enjoyable. My second ever PC was ...sort of a GMH hunter. Actually worked for a Noble House, but it worked out the same. Was one of my favorites. Then I've played with a GMH a few times since then, and I've found those times more enjoyable than being on my own, as well.

[Desertman]

I also like the idea around making the "House Hunter" role, after changing its designation to "Field Operations", a more military role.

The problem? As Delirium stated earlier, there isn't a lot of House on House conflict or meaningful conflict. The military nature of the roles might go unfulfilled since the Houses themselves are city-state neutral. How many fights would they actually be needed for?

I had a character once years ago that was an ex-Bynner that got hired by Kadius and I negotiated being allowed to keep my "Sergeant" title with the Kadian family member at the time. I told them if I took the job I wouldn't make a House of hunters. I would make a House of soldiers and fighters, because that's what I did.

He loved it. I loved it. I got four new hunters in the first RL day. People seemed to love it.

Unfortunately I wasn't a "good man" heh, and was killed in the arena within a few RL days for past crimes I'd committed before ever taking that job.

I would have liked to see how that worked out.

[Jeax]

As far as to the current topic...GMH hunters are more well taken care of than indie hunters...up to a point. A really "powerful" and well known indie hunter can actually probably provide for themselves a lot more coinage, travel, etc, than a GMH can

And here I would respond to myself, and probably say that this should not be true. If one is a GMH leader, I think that person should probably find a way to make their GMH house better than being a rocking indie hunter, just to make the Merchant House shine above the indie life. I will ponder on this.

[Jeax]

I also like the idea around making the "House Hunter" role, after changing its designation to "Field Operations", a more military role.

The problem? As Delirium stated earlier, there isn't a lot of House on House conflict or meaningful conflict. The military nature of the roles might go unfulfilled since the Houses themselves are city-state neutral. How many fights would they actually be needed for?

I don't think a Merchant House needs a military. Their hunters double as protection, or assassins, etc, when the Houses want to play politics. There is no reason for a Merchant family to need an actual military like the Fist or something like that. They are already housed behind a military. If they need to take up arms, their hunters would do that. Hunting is the hunter's first role, and I don't see a cause for them to be soldiers.

However, you are correct in the way that there is not a lot of meaningful House on House conflict. The only time I have been playing in a role where I could accomplish this, I was definitely trying to push a bar up here, but unfortunately I was not in the House long enough to do so. Given that the Houses all have agreements to not create each others' things...it takes away competition, everyone basically have a monopoly in GMH land so there's no reason for worlds to collide there, but there are other areas for conflict to arise. I just sometimes feel like that competition/conflict isn't worth a whole lot.

Give the example, though, of if two modern business tycoons had it out for each other--what could they do to one another? I don't think it would be military assault. It would be embargos, choking off product supply or harming sales in some way. Finding different suppliers...ways to insult and hurt the economy of the other. Without direct competition between Houses though, this would be hard to accomplish.

[Barzalene]

That's why we'll call them operatives, not soldiers

[Desertman]

I like the idea of Houses going to war with each other over potential resource discoveries. This would give the "hunters" something to do other than "hunt".

The Copper War was between Allanak and Tuluk.

I would love to see something like that happen between Kadius, Kurac, and Salarr, though how something would prove valuable enough to get their attention and not the attention of the city-states is a bit of a hassle on the realism front.

Anything Salarr and Kadius would fight each other over in terms of resources would almost certainly draw the two city-states into the mix to fight as well.

[Nyr]

And yes, yes I do, but this thread if for discussing the economy surrounding making House hunters feel more useful and was triggered off of the conversation surrounding the new NPC change, so I am focusing on that now in this thread.

Yes, I'm requesting you do bring your other ideas to the fore.  I thought the thread's purpose was getting derailed (might do to reread the OP).  Instead of generally going over the issues of GMH hunters, assessing them, and discussing how to make them better in several ways, it had been focused on changes that just won't happen due to policy, or because they are unfeasible, or because they are otherwise unrealistic at this time.  You've got staff feedback here and in another thread saying as much.  To suggest we want to silence your ideas is a bit much.  You've got evidence from another thread of player ideas (implemented recently) that we do want to take in feedback and utilize it.  However, while you might enjoy continuing to discuss the merits of something we aren't going to do, it is a derail at that point.  That's why we jump in to say "hey, btw, we don't do this/won't do this/this is unrealistic/this is why we don't do that" so that you have more info and can focus on something more productive.



To that end, I like the idea of the business tycoon level of conflict and conflict over resources.  I think that is one area of conflict that can be managed by both sides of the equation (staff and players).  The larger picture stuff we can do as staff, definitely, though this would need to come out of some sizable plot investment to affect the sizes we are talking about here.  I'll explain a few of those things as you may not be aware of them.  We can adjust taxes in a city-state against several material types, weapons, spice, armor, artwork, and food.  We can do our part to make sure that resource-type conflicts can and do occur, creating plots around them.   What can be done to make that a bit more localized, however?  We can adjust shopkeepers individually.  We can blacklist people or groups.  We can adjust rent levels as well.  There are more tools in the toolbox that we can use, too.

[HavokBlue]

I don't think staff are going to rebrand all the hunting divisions as something else. The impression I got when I played a GMH PC, for example, was that they really, really wanted to forget the Salarr Expansion Division.

With that said, if you're a GMH hunter and your boss isn't getting you involved in interesting plots, or you're just being used to hunt... I dunno, kill your boss and get a new one.

A lot of the complaints I've seen leveled at the GMH hunter role in this thread have me scratching my head. Maybe my experience was an outlier?... But I found that GMH leaders generally have the freedom to address a lot of these issues in the way they lead their crew. I had inter-House conflict (that was more meaningful than 'your hunter insulted my hunter') and I had hunters and PCs from other clans involved in an overarching plot with a specific goal that a lot of people like to cry about and say can't be accomplished these days.

[CodeMaster]

Everyone likes to get high scores and personal bests...

What if the GMH bank account was the score?

What if staff made a script or something so that GMH bank accounts slowly ticked back down to some large sum (like, 10,000 coins as a really basic example).  Then GMH merchants could strive for a high score by depositing coin into this black hole bank account.

It could become an OOC bragging factor (hey I got the Salarr bank account up to 50,000 back in my day), an IC motivator (the House is in need of more 'political' influence, we need to double our liquid assets in the next year), etc.

[Nyr]

I don't think staff are going to rebrand all the hunting divisions as something else. The impression I got when I played a GMH PC, for example, was that they really, really wanted to forget the Salarr Expansion Division.

Not for anything it did, but for how and why it was implemented.  The players were great about it all, and we got some good plots in there during that time anyway.

[Desertman]

To suggest we want to silence your ideas is a bit much.  You've got evidence from another thread of player ideas (implemented recently) that we do want to take in feedback and utilize it.  However, while you might enjoy continuing to discuss the merits of something we aren't going to do, it is a derail at that point.  That's why we jump in to say "hey, btw, we don't do this/won't do this/this is unrealistic/this is why we don't do that" so that you have more info and can focus on something more productive.



To that end, I like the idea of the business tycoon level of conflict and conflict over resources.  I think that is one area of conflict that can be managed by both sides of the equation (staff and players).  The larger picture stuff we can do as staff, definitely, though this would need to come out of some sizable plot investment to affect the sizes we are talking about here.  I'll explain a few of those things as you may not be aware of them.  We can adjust taxes in a city-state against several material types, weapons, spice, armor, artwork, and food.  We can do our part to make sure that resource-type conflicts can and do occur, creating plots around them.   What can be done to make that a bit more localized, however?  We can adjust shopkeepers individually.  We can blacklist people or groups.  We can adjust rent levels as well.  There are more tools in the toolbox that we can use, too.

Understood. I just misinterpreted your "Stick Horse" gif's meaning. My apology. Once staff says it won't be done at this time, conversations about it should end. I just didn't know.

It seems very difficult to create meaningful resource conflicts that wouldn't draw the attention of the city-states considering the dynamics surrounding the world and its politics. I mentioned it above, but what could be valuable enough to make Salarr and Kadius for example, go into disputes, that wouldn't just get taken over by the two cities anyways?

[Barzalene]

With that said, if you're a GMH hunter and your boss isn't getting you involved in interesting plots, or you're just being used to hunt... I dunno, kill your boss and get a new one.

A lot of the complaints I've seen leveled at the GMH hunter role in this thread have me scratching my head. Maybe my experience was an outlier?... But I found that GMH leaders generally have the freedom to address a lot of these issues in the way they lead their crew. I had inter-House conflict (that was more meaningful than 'your hunter insulted my hunter') and I had hunters and PCs from other clans involved in an overarching plot with a specific goal that a lot of people like to cry about and say can't be accomplished these days.

Yes! People, if you're going to app a leadership role, come to lead. Your PC can be a selfish ass, but you the player should always have an eye on involving the kids. If you don't I want to do that, don't take the roles.

But its not all on those people of curse. All the stuff mentioned in this thread comes to bear - staff policies and support, minions co.ing prepared to make and have their own fun. But I think those leaders leading is a lynchpin.

[Down Under]

Perhaps with more accountability and better fleshed out documentation, an 'Expansion Divison' could work if ALL the GMH had one. In that way, they would be competing with one another to find new resource caches, disrupting each other's 'Expansion Divisions', and generally spying/infiltrating each other.

As it stands, the GMH seem very hand-shake yessir no sir with very little backstabbing behind the scenes. This also doesn't breed conflict, it breeds boredom.

Given that the GMH will have more time to run plots and animations with the implementation of NPC warehouse item distribution, I believe we'll see more conflict/murder/corruption/betrayal form the GMH because they won't simply be vending machines anymore. And that excites me.

In my mind's eye, I see vNPC scouts reporting back that rubies have been found in a mine far to the east in Blah Blah Blah mountain range...(Don't want to say because it's not common IC knowledge. For the newbs!). Kadius begins to mobilize their field operatives to investigate, but so does Salarr. And so does Kurac? But why do they want rubies? Because Kadius wants rubies. So they want to get there first and set up shop, clean it out, and sell them to Kadius later.

This kind of 'resource grab' plot could provide endless opportunity and fun for Hunter PCs, as they search the known for areas rich with resources, report them back to their House, and attempt to 'lay claim' to that area. Perhaps a deposit of rare Onyx is found...But in the Tablelands. Now all the GMH have to carefully toe the line with the tribes within the Tablelands, involving all these clans in one fell swoop.

[HavokBlue]

There is nothing stopping GMH leader PCs from telling their clan staff they want to go search for rubies, or diamonds, or whatever contentious loot and then working towards that goal.

[Down Under]

There is nothing stopping GMH leader PCs from telling their clan staff they want to go search for rubies, or diamonds, or whatever contentious loot and then working towards that goal.

There's the motivation to actually do anything besides take down item orders of PCs, and passing them on to your Staff, waiting for them to be loaded, try and find a time to connect with that PC again, and then get money from them for the items.

When you're a vending machine, you don't try to create or think of plots, you try to maintain the status quo, which is why there is such massive burnout within the GMH community, both for Staff and Players it seems.

[HavokBlue]

The new warehouse NPCs should reduce the hassle of that significantly then 

[KankWhisperer]

There is nothing stopping GMH leader PCs from telling their clan staff they want to go search for rubies, or diamonds, or whatever contentious loot and then working towards that goal.

There is staff.

[Barzalene]

With that said, if you're a GMH hunter and your boss isn't getting you involved in interesting plots, or you're just being used to hunt... I dunno, kill your boss and get a new one.

A lot of the complaints I've seen leveled at the GMH hunter role in this thread have me scratching my head. Maybe my experience was an outlier?... But I found that GMH leaders generally have the freedom to address a lot of these issues in the way they lead their crew. I had inter-House conflict (that was more meaningful than 'your hunter insulted my hunter') and I had hunters and PCs from other clans involved in an overarching plot with a specific goal that a lot of people like to cry about and say can't be accomplished these days.

GE's! People, if you're going to app a leadership role, come to lead. Your PC can be a selfish ass, but you the player should always have an eye on involving the kids. If you don't I want to do that, don't take the roles.

But its not all on those people of curse. All the stuff mentioned in this thread comes to bear - staff policies and support, minions co.ing prepared to make and have their own fun. But I think those leaders leading is a lynchpin.

I hate when I babble for twenty minutes and fail to make my point. My point is that leaders should find projects and needs for hunters and crafter's, even if they have to invent them. And make an effort to really sell a sense of urgency rather than busy work.